Goodbye Boston...

My stay in Boston abruptly came to an end...literally. I haven't had the heart to complete this final blog. Since I'm no longer in Boston, this blog will cease to exist after this last blog entry.

Fast forward to 2 months later. I started writing some time ago but only managed 2 sentences.
Fast forward to 8 months later. It is nearing the end of February 2009. Not finishing this blog has been hanging over my head all this while and I knew I had to finish it or else there would not be any closure.
I've just scanned through my blogs of our time in Boston, and I'm extremely glad that I made the entries. With time, we forget, but with powerful elements like photographs and words, moments that we treasure and record will always be with us.
For this reason alone, I will always believe in photography, cos that's something I can express myself best with. I'm not a person who is good at expressing myself with words, and I believe that I've been blessed with a God given 'talent' to photograph and I hope to keep at it til my last breath.

Back to Boston. We had to leave within 4 days after finding out that we had to leave the US by June 8, 2008 or become illegal aliens. My F1 visa had expired on my last day of term, May 19, and my student status with Boston University would cease to exist from June 9. I'd known that my F1 visa had expired but the relevant people at BU told me that I was given an extra 90 days grace period after my F1 expiration before I had to leave the country. This is the usual practice. However, my case was unusual as I had technically not graduated yet. I still owed my final thesis which I haven't completed to this day and because of that, I did not 'qualify' for the 90 days grace period. It's useless to point fingers now to say whose fault it was that I didn't know this fact. Of course, at the time, I blamed the people at the International Students relations for not realising this. It is common practice for grad students in my course, or for any other grad course for that matter, to take time to do one's thesis. My course allows me 7 years to complete it. Had the people there reaslised this, they would've known that I'd have to leave sooner, not later.

I guess I have to be grateful that they realised it in time for me to react and take a decision to leave with my family.
Whatever it is, I was extremely upset that our time in Boston had to end this way. In those few days before we left, we went through a whole myriad of emotions and decision-making. At first, we decided to stay on, despite the illegal alien status, as we were due to go for another major 2 wk trip to California. It was Tuesday when I was told of the deadline to leave the country, and we were due to leave for California on Wednesday, to meet up with Jill and Corrinne and mum's friend, Aunty Oi Leen. Then I decided that my mum would go on her own, while we head to Canada for an overnight stay, to return to the States the next day, hopefully under the 3mth tourist waiver scheme that Singapore has with the USA. Then we even entertained the thought of flying to California first, and try to make our way up to Canada from the West Coast. Things got so complicated and in the end, after talking to someone at the Singapore mission in New York who advised us not to take the Canada option, we decided to forgo everything and just leave the States by the end of Sunday.
Then came the logistics of vacating our apartment, getting rid of the things in it, arranging for shipping of our things back home, arranging all our flights, including my mum's, and trying to recoup as much from our California trip, which we had already paid for, including a couple of night's stay in Las Vegas. I felt bad for my mum as she came all the way only to have to miss out on this part of her holiday. She was looking forward to it, reuniting with her old friend, etc.
I was angry, sad, bitter and kept asking myself and God why this was happening, what was the lesson that He was trying to teach me?

The answer came soon after. The packing. The next few days were spent packing and in that short time span of 10 months, I had accumulated just too much. It was such an effort packing and thinking of how to get rid of all our stuff in the apt. We had bought too much, collected too much and it was such a problem now to even give it away.
I called Fr John to see if someone at the church would take everything. I'd wanted to sell the stuff on Craigslist, but there was just no time for it. I gave everything away to the Church. A futon, bed, toaster, a great sofa bed, bookshelves, tables, chairs, printer, tv, dvd player, everything one would need to set up a new home. Then it struck me that I was guilty of being too caught up in the material things. Not only that, I was wasting everything. I did not value the things I possessed and 'threw' money away too easily. These are exactly the values I am teaching Meg not to adopt. It has to start with us as parents to set an example for our kids to emulate. This whole episode taught me not to acquire too much cos at the end of the day, our lives, we can't take these material things with us. Of course, I'm no saint and I've not totally expunged these materialistic tendencies out of my system, but I do think twice and three times now before I buy anything.

Now that we've been back in Singapore for about 8 mths, Boston seems like a distant memory. I can't even remember some of the names of its streets, its 'T' stops, which we were so accustomed to back then. Despite our unceremonious departure, we'll always have our time and memories to keep. I still remember those times very fondly and how it was such a good time away from the comforts and familiarity of Singapore. It was an answered prayer and I will never forget it. It will always have a special place in my heart. Thanks to all of you for following this blog. I wrote it first and foremost to document and journal our time there, but I also wrote it for you. Goodbye Boston! Thanks for the great time and lasting memories!

Space Shuttle Launch

From New York to Orlando: We flew into Orlando from Newark and one of the highlights of the Orlando leg was witnessing our very first (and probably last) space shuttle launch. Discovery blasted into space on Saturday, May 31, 2008 and although we were about 20 km away from the launch site, it was still an amazing sight and the atmosphere was good. People cheered as the shuttle left a trail of white cloud (which is actually a steam cloud caused by its heat reacting thousands of gallons of water dumped onto the launch pad just before take off to protect the area from catching fire from the intense heat) behind. We got to Titusville, the next nearest town from Cape Canaveral just in the nick of time, a couple of minutes before lift off at 5.02pm EST. It was bloody hot and of course the best spots were already taken. But then we saw some people watching from the river with a rather unobstructed view and decided to wade into it out of desperation for a good view. Fortunately, it was low tide and a good roll up of our bermudas did the trick. It was all over within two minutes. We stayed behind to catch the rocket boosters disengaging from the spacecraft but lost sight of it after a while. We stayed in Orlando longer than necessary just so we could catch the momentous event. It was a perfect day (though a tad too hot) for a launch, with a rich blue sky peppered with clouds and an absence of wind. Awesome!
The water looks icky but it was alright. It actually cooled us off a bit!
As close as my wide angle lens could go...

Notice that speck of white in the distance off center right?